| |
| Rosamond. Are you tir’d? | |
| But I seem shameful to you, shame-worthy, | |
| Contemnable of good women, being so bad, | |
| So bad as I am. Yea, would God, would God, | |
| I had kept my face from this contempt of yours. | 5 |
| Insolent custom would not anger me | |
| So as you do; more clean are you than I, | |
| Sweeter for gathering of the grace of God | |
| To perfume some accomplish’d work in heaven? | |
| I do not use to scorn, stay pure of hate, | 10 |
| Seeing how myself am scorn’d unworthily; | |
| But anger here so takes me in the throat | |
| I would speak now for fear it strangle me. | |
| Here, let me feel your hair and hands and face; | |
| I see not flesh is holier than flesh, | 15 |
| Or blood than blood more choicely qualified | |
| That scorn should live between them. Better am I | |
| Than many women; you are not over fair, | |
| Nor delicate with some exceeding good | |
| In the sweet flesh; you have no much tenderer soul | 20 |
| Than love is moulded out of for God’s use | |
| Who wrought our double need; you are not so choice | |
| That in the golden kingdom of your eyes | |
| All coins should melt for service. But I that am | |
| Part of the perfect witness for the world | 25 |
| How good it is; I chosen in God’s eyes | |
| To fill the lean account of under men, | |
| The lank and hunger-bitten ugliness | |
| Of half his people; I who make fair heads | |
| Bow, saying, “Though we be in no wise fair | 30 |
| We have touch’d all beauty with our eyes, we have | |
| Some relish in the hand, and in the lips | |
| Some breath of it,” because they saw me once; | |
| I whose curl’d hair was as a strong stak’d net | |
| To take the hunters and the hunt, and bind | 35 |
| Faces and feet and hands; a golden gin | |
| Wherein the tawny-lidded lions fell, | |
| Broken at ankle; I that am yet, ah yet, | |
| And shall be till the worm hath share in me, | |
| Fairer than love or the clean truth of God, | 40 |
| More sweet than sober customs of kind use | |
| That shackle pain and stablish temperance; | |
| I that have roses in my name, and make | |
| All flowers glad to set their color by; | |
| I that have held a land between twin lips | 45 |
| And turn’d large England to a little kiss; | |
| God thinks not of me as contemptible; | |
| And that you think me even a smaller thing | |
| Than your own goodness and slight name of good, | |
| Your special, thin, particular repute,— | 50 |
| I would some mean could be but clear to me | |
| Not to contemn you. | |
| |
